Wendy Freedman - What is the Origin of the Laws of Nature?

From the fusion of stars to the evolution of life, the world works because the laws of nature or physics make things happen. Our universe as a whole may have come into existence through the laws of quantum physics. But from where did the laws of quantum physics come? Have they always existed?



Wendy Laurel Freedman is a Canadian-American astronomer, best known for her measurement of the Hubble Constant, and as director of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, and Las Campanas, Chile.


Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[kevinmo]

The most honest answer is that we don’t know.

[NothingMaster]

What an absolute disaster.
You asked the question: What is the origin of the laws of nature? And then all you and your guest did was to attempt to address the possibility of whether or not they change over time!!! WHY ASK A QUESTION AND ATTEMPT TO ANSWER ANOTHER?! Pointless and utterly disappointing.

[Ali-yylx]

God is the answer. Its obviouse and inevitable whether biesed atheists like it or not😎

[michaelbarry]

from the standpoint of moral philosophy the assertion of the 'Laws of Nature' is nothing more than the assertion that the universe as it exists bears moral content....the physical laws of nature are not entirely known and science is grappling with discovering those laws on a continuing basis

[tyamada]

A piece from a new book titled: Saved by the Light of the Buddha Within... 

[ChuckBrowntheClown]

Does she have a time machine to be able to look back in time? I don't see how astronomy takes you back in time. Your observance is only what you have seen and recorded. So you can't fully observe past time that doesn't have a fully observed little details of time, but you do have a book that gives you observance of an overview of time being fulfilled. The past, present, and future.

[brandursimonsen]

At a distance, time and location vary. But how many additional variables are there ?

[Hoplite]

So there we have it . Dick is not a constant, but the laws of magnetic attraction is absolute. I’ve been living an illusion.

[tedgrant]

God invented two kinds of laws, easy and hard.
If you break an easy law, it's called a sin (eating meat on Friday).
If you break a hard law, it's called a miracle (walking on water)

[jareknowak]

- Wrong title.
- There is no answer to the question in title.

[Bo-tznw]

Wendy Freeman as usual, simple explanations and easy to follow.
Still the interesting, fundamental and extremely complicated etc. question here about the origin of the laws of nature? All in 4.40 min?
Well, sorry, not so much.

[RamiTamir-udgb]

We are controlled by laws of nature.
There is a general force of nature, and two opposite forces—bestowal and reception—extend from it.
We exist between these forces, and both of these qualities affect us.
Then, the question arises: How do we develop under the influence of these forces? Where do we act? Where are we free? How do we accumulate and correlate these two forces within ourselves? How can we build ourselves out of them?
These are the questions that the wisdom of Kabbalah engages in: how we receive these two forces in an optimal balance, and with their help, shape ourselves so as to resemble the very laws of nature, to arise and reach equivalence of form with the force of bestowal in nature. These very laws gave us the opportunity to control the pace of our progress in accepting them upon ourselves.
That is the point of our freewill.
How could we act if we do not have freewill? Who would we be? Would we just be like robots, always under control?
Until now, we have always been under control. What does it mean?
Nature as if injects a drop of egoism–the desire to enjoy at others’ expense–into us, and then it does so a little more, and a little more again, and we then get the impetus to move toward all kinds of egoistic goals. The more our egoism inflates, the more we become willing to move to increasingly gain at the expense of others. Nature constantly squeezes the syringe into us until it eventually infuses us with the full amount of egoism.
Our era is characterized by the syringe of egoism having become completely injected into us, with no more egoism left to inject. That is why we have nowhere left to run.
Where do we head from here? What do we do?
Moreover, egoism has become global and integral. In the beginning, we felt good because we reached egoistic global connections in the world and thought that everything would be fine. However, when such connections started depending on everyone, we turned out to be nature’s opposite.
At this juncture, we find ourselves with a major dilemma, and we need to work out what we do about it. Where our fully-inflated egoism coupled with our tightening global connections brings us to increasing problems around the world, today we require a new form of connection-enriching education that would have the ability to guide us on how to change our egoistic connections to altruistic ones. That is the key to a shift to a harmonious and peaceful world.

[masonart]

More amd more overcomplication of the real truth - nothing exists outside your own self and thoughts. Not in a concrete, verifiable way that couldn't be explained to away. Reality shared is based on concensus only.

[coltonlohn]

Is it just me, or does that furniture look cartoonishly oversized?

[crazyhandshands]

Almighty God created everything the entire universe.

[holgerjrgensen]

There are No origin of Eternity, the eternal laws has always been,
dont waste your time with these useless speculations.

[radiometer]

If we didn't have these deep perplexing and unanswered questions then humans would have no reason to interact with each other. God is just keeping us in the dark and allowing us to experience all these worldly phenomenon so that humans would be more united with one another so they could learn and make some real progress. If God just gave us everything on a silver platter and we didn't have to work for it then things in life would have no real value.

[TorgerVedeler]

Every morning I wake up and the universe gets more amazing and more interesting.

[robertwhite]

The "laws" are descriptive not prescriptive. They are not things or objects so they don't have "origins" they only describe how objects behave. You're never going to find this invisible undetectable deity you crave

[achyuthcn]

Why do scientists do science?? It's not like they are born to do so...